


Been A Son

by ArsonEmbre



Series: Son of a Preacher Man [18]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Family Issues, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nirvana (Band) References, Religious Guilt, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28683411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsonEmbre/pseuds/ArsonEmbre
Summary: His time is up, and it’s time for Demyx to return home.
Relationships: Axel/Demyx (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: Son of a Preacher Man [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1398067
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Been A Son

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t even begin to describe to you how happy I am to finally be posting this. I’m glad this story is coming back to me and that I’m able to write for it again. God, thank you for being so patient I’m so very sorry.

Today is the day that Demyx returns home.

“Are you sure you’re good to go?”

The week had gone by entirely too fast for the both of them, and he’d fooled himself into thinking that being here with Axel--being happy--could last forever. A bitter smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he looked up into pretty green eyes, shaking his head gently. “I haven’t even left your house yet and I feel like I’m walking right into my execution or something.” The second he feels himself start to tear up, he turns his attention back to the bag he’d brought with him and zips it shut. Maybe if he blinks enough, he can get it to go away.

He’d known that he’d have to go back home eventually. Why had he let himself get so comfortable?

“You know that if you can’t take it, you can always come back.” Demyx listens, but doesn’t respond. It’s something he knows is possible, but not likely. His father is holding too much over his head for him to run away again, or even attempt it. If he can just make it through college, everything will be fine. There’s leeway with college, right? He could stay on campus, take the long way home when called for, blame studying for his inability to come home,  _ something. _ There were ways to get around his father. There were ways to survive. 

Axel takes a seat at the edge of the bed. Demyx doesn’t have to look at him to know that he’s frowning. He’s gotten to a point where he just knows when Axel is upset. The feeling takes over the entire room, crawls all over his skin and makes the space between them a little too warm, and not in any of the ways he would want it to be. “If it ever gets to a place where, like...you don’t have anywhere to stay, you don’t have to go asking around.”

There’s an ache in his chest. Under any other circumstances, he might have laughed at such an awkward attempt to say  _ If you get kicked out for being gay, come and stay with me _ . He thinks it’s sweet, maybe a little too sweet for this kind of goodbye. All it’s doing is making him not want to leave and that’s the last thing he needs to feel right now. He’d already told his mother that he was on his way; it isn’t like he can come up with a lie in order to stay another night. And even if he could, it would only make tomorrow morning worse. Each second that he isn’t walking through the front door is chiseling at his father’s patience and that knowledge is eating him alive.

Why did he even come here? What was he thinking?

“I know,” Demyx says softly. “Thank you.”

Axel goes quiet. Demyx takes that as a sign to leave before it starts to hurt anymore than it already does. He picks the bag up by the strap and fixes it over his shoulder. He can leave, and he knows that he should, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leans down and presses his lips to Axel’s. Axel is more than happy to return the kiss, as brief as it was. And all these sweet words come to mind--take care of yourself, I’ll be back, I’ll miss you,  _ I love you _ \--but he doesn’t say any of them. That’s not how the two of them work.

Their foreheads touch. He does have the heart to say _one_ thing. “If I come back and that fresh stash of ice cream cones is gone, we’re fighting about it.”

Axel snorts. “That’s big talk for a man who giggles when I blow on his neck—”

“Cool, bye!” Demyx stands up straight and starts for the door, but Axel quickly grabs him by the wrists and pulls. Both men end up laughing as he trips over his own feet and stumbles, and Axel wraps his arms tightly around his lower back. Demyx maneuvers his arm so that the bag falls to the floor, and he finds himself smiling as he winds up in Axel’s lap once again. His smile turns sad as he reaches up to smooth his hand over messy red hair. “How do you keep doing that?”

“Keep doing what?” Axel asks, smiling back at him as if he isn’t about to leave. As if he isn’t about to ruin what was possibly the best week of both of their lives. “Making you smile when you need to? You’re easy to entertain.”

That isn’t saying much at all. “I mean, so are you.”

“Exactly. We both are. We could get a light up toy that moves  _ and _ makes noise and have the time of our fucking lives on the living room floor.” The sound of his laughter winding between the last few syllables spreads to Demyx, and he’s laughing too hard to remember that the rest of the world even exists. But only for a moment, because reality refuses to be ignored today.

Demyx ends up shakes his head again. “Be serious. Why are you suddenly so happy? I’m about to leave.”

“I know,” Axel shrugs. “You always do. But you always find your way back here. You’re leaving today, but I’ll see you again. It’s not that much different from any other day if you think about it.” His smile dims a bit. “Trying to be all serious with you didn’t seem to help. So I went back to what we know and what we do best. Nothing has to change. All right?”

It already had.

Demyx nods. “Nothing has to change.”

Axel leans in for another kiss. This one lasts longer, and it feels a lot less like goodbye. The ache in Demyx’s chest eases as Axel pulls away. He can’t help but notice that that sparkle in his eye is gone. Something else has replaced it, but he can’t figure out what to call it. His eyes look...brighter. Greener. Happier.

“I love you,” Axel whispers.

He hesitates. It takes a while for the words to register. When they do, the smallest, happiest hum slips out without Demyx’s permission.

“I love you too.”

* * *

One thing that Demyx always notices when returning to this house after being away for a period of time is that it has a particularly strong smell that hits you as soon as you walk inside. He doesn’t know if this scent has a name, but he compares it to something that’s brand new; that manufactured, fresh-out-of-the-factory smell. It reminds him of opening merch packages or unboxing new shoes for the first time, but being here never comes with the same excitement.

Demyx shuts the door hard, wanting to announce his presence but not yet willing to speak with anyone. Both of his parents’ cars are home, but they aren’t sitting or standing and waiting for him anywhere. No, he has to go to them. Asking them to come and speak to him would be such an inconvenience to a busy pastor’s time.

Clutching the strap of his bag tightly, Demyx slowly climbs the stairs. Each step forward feels like someone is tightening both of their hands around his neck, and he feels like he’s about to suffocate by the time he reaches the top of the staircase. He forces himself to breathe despite his chest seemingly not wanting to expand at all. He’s expecting an hour or so of a lecture, but not much else. That’s nothing new. He eyes the door to the office and sees that it’s shut tight. Good. He can probably get to his room and give himself a few more minutes before heading straight into it.

Quietly, he makes his way down the hall until he reaches the door to his room. For some reason, the door is already ajar, though he swears he’d shut it when he left that day, even if he had been in a rush. Demyx pushes the door open with the back of his hand, letting his knuckles knock against the wood as he does so. He doesn’t expect to see his mother sitting on his bed with a book in her lap. She’s sitting cross-legged in the center of his bed (he’s absolutely sure that he didn’t make it before he left) with what appears to be a bible in her lap. The sound of his knuckles against the door caused her to look up, and her red-rimmed eyes immediately found him.

_ I didn’t mean to make you cry _ .

She doesn’t say a word, nor does she look away from him as she sets her bible aside. He takes a few steps forward, meaning to apologize for being the reason that she’s in this state in the first place, but the words don’t come. Demyx stands awkwardly near the door to his own room, looking at a broken version of his mother with the knowledge that it’s his fault she’s like this in the first place.

She doesn’t scold him the way that his father would. Instead, she pats the empty space next to her. Demyx takes his time filling the space, trying to gauge whether or not he’s in trouble. It doesn’t seem like it, thankfully. Her face is worn from years of stress and worry due to both work in the church and family, but there’s a hint of peace in her expression that he clings to with the tightest of grips.

A few beats of silence pass before his mother eventually unfolds her legs and turns to face him. “Come here,” she whispers as she gently tugs him into a hug. It’s comfortable and warm like a mother’s hug should be, not rigid, formal, and rushed like one he would receive from a church member. It doesn’t take very long for him to relax into it. The last time he was shown this kind of affection from her was...he was a child then, wasn’t he? Even when he went off to college for so many months, she never greeted him like this. The anxiety he’d previously felt is replaced with guilt, and somehow that feels worse.

“I didn’t know where you were,” she spoke, voice wavering with every syllable. “Even when you and your father get into it, you always tell  _ me _ where you’re going but you didn’t this time and I didn’t know what to do or where to find you. I don’t like guessing if you’re okay, Demyx...”

He finds this ironic, considering that he’s never mentally or emotionally stable in this house, but neither of them seem to care. He has to disappear for someone to care about him. As guilty as he feels, his arms stay at his side.

His mother pulls away, reaching up to cup his face in her hands. Her mouth opens, but she immediately stops. She starts inspecting him the way that mothers do when they’re looking to see if their child is physically hurt, and he finds a warmth in her eyes that hasn’t been there in years. Strangely, it’s the tears in his own eyes that makes him finally want to speak.

“I’m sorry.”

Demyx blinks. What is  _ she  _ sorry for? Sure, he has an exhaustive list of things that he thinks she should be apologizing for, but the fact that she’s apologizing for  _ anything  _ at all is beyond him. Perhaps the devil should invest in a winter coat.

“Why?” he asks out of genuine curiosity, except he’s so tired that it doesn’t sound like a question at all.

The older woman places her hands into her lap. “You know...when you’re away at college, I’m the one stuck here listening to your father. I sit quietly and listen to him ho on and on about his successful church, and how other churches can’t compare. I listen to him rant about how everyone else is living in sin, and how they’re all going to Hell in a handbasket. I listen to everything that man has to say. I support him in his decisions and don’t talk back. I don’t argue. I cook and I clean and I stay in a woman’s place...like a good wife should.”

She reaches up to wipe a stray tear from her cheek, sniffling and sighing softly. “I’ve been the  _ definition  _ of what the bible says a good wife should be. And that’s still not enough for him. You give him what he wants and he keeps wanting more. If it isn’t perfect in his eyes, it’s not of God, and if it isn’t of God, he’ll keep on until he gets his way.” Another sniffle. “And I’m  _ goddamn  _ tired of it.”

Demyx blinks in surprise. Not once in the twenty plus years that he’s been alive has he heard his mother even mutter the word  _ ass  _ before. He supposed that everyone has a limit, and something must have happened to make her reach hers while he was away. Or maybe this was a long time coming and he just hadn’t seen any of the signs. 

Her hands shake as she passes them over her knees. It’s something she does to soothe herself when she’s nervous, he’d noticed. “When you left, I  _ finally  _ started to understand why you act out the way that you do—why you want so badly to study outside of the city and try to disappear when you do come home for breaks. If it’s suffocating for me—someone who tries to live up to the expectation every day because I want to be good enough for him—it must be even harder for you when you probably don’t even want to. So I’m sorry for helping him do that to you.”

Demyx feels compelled to say, “It’s okay.”

But she rejects it with a hard shake of her head. “No, it isn’t okay. How we’ve treated you is okay. A-And that’s why…”

She takes a breath. He can see the tears gathering in her eyes the longer the pause takes. “I will never be good enough for your father. I realize that now. Being a good wife came at the price of being horrible to my own son and that eats me alive every day.”

There’s more silence. It doesn’t seem like she has anything more to say, but Demyx still finds himself on the edge of his seat. Without saying a word, he reaches out to hold her hand. She accepts it with a grip so tight that it almost hurts.

“I’m divorcing your father.”

Demyx’s head jerks back in surprise. That was one of the many things he never thought she’d ever say. Despite his mistreatment over the years and the warped portrayal of what a family should be, deep down Demyx always thought that his parents were happily in love. They stood by each other and supported one another in every decision, or so he’d previously thought. He feels like he should be relieved by the fact that his mother is taking a stand and doing what she needs to do for her own wellbeing, but he only feels disappointed. Their united front really was just a front.

Was there ever any love in their house...at all?

He doesn’t want to be selfish. For so many years, he’d wished that his mother would support him in just  _ one  _ thing. If she wants his support in this decision, then he is more than happy to give it to her. There’s just one thing that he has to ask before doing so. “Are you...sure? That this is what you want to do?”

He takes a moment to really look at her, and it’s as if he’s seeing her for the first time. Instead of avoiding her eye, he looks directly into them and sees just how tired she is. There’s barely any life left in them. They’ve been dimmed down to such a dull shade of green that he almost wants to ask if she is physically sick. There are dark circles under her eyes and the telltale lines of worry creasing her forehead. The color to her skin is almost depleted and she looks...not herself. She doesn’t look like the pastor’s wife anymore. She looks like she desperately needs help.

The older woman nods, sniffling once again. “I’m sure. I’m reaching my limit with the amount of shit I put up with. In the end, I’m receiving next to nothing in return for doing so. I plan on telling him this weekend. I’ve had the papers for a while, but I’ve never had the courage to hand them to him. I’m still afraid that the date I set up for me will come and go and I’ll still have them sitting in the drawer.”

Demyx knows that fear very well. He likens it to the moment he decided he wanted to go to school elsewhere, and he held onto his acceptance letter for months before actually telling his father that he got in and wanted to attend. That conversation hadn’t gone well at all. He can’t imagine what the conversation will be like when she approaches him about divorce.

“If you want me to be there when you tell him, I can be.”

To his surprise, she shakes her head. “I can’t ask that of you. Everything that you’ve done up until now, you’ve done on your own. I deserve to do this on my own.” She offers him a watery smile as she grabs her bible and starts to stand. “I’m sorry for not being a better mother to you. My mistakes...my  _ choices _ are not a reflection of you. I’m sure that I’ve aided in making you feel alone in your own family, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

This time, he fights the urge to say ‘It’s okay’, because it isn’t okay. Instead, he tells her, “Thank you.”

Those are the last words they exchange before she leaves his room, shutting the door behind her with a soft click. Now that Demyx is alone with his own thoughts, he feels more guilty and confused than he’s ever felt in his life. All the time he spent resenting his mother could have been so very different if she had told him all of this years ago. If she had apologized  _ years  _ ago. If she had actually supported him  _ years ago. _ The resentment he felt only deepens now that he realizes he wasn’t alone in the way that he felt, but she continued to make him feel that way.

She truly had chosen her husband over her son again and again. He’d always known that, but hearing her admit it hurt like a fresh wound. His knee jerk reaction to this news had been to figure out a way to forgive her. That was the Christian thing to do: you forgive everyone who has ever wronged you, as God forgives you of every sin you commit every single day. You treat people the way Jesus treated people during his time on earth. Kindness. Forgiveness. You give others the clothes off of your back when they need them and turn the other cheek because revenge is not godly. Holding a grudge is not of God. Staying angry isn’t god-like.

As Demyx stares absently at the floor of his bedroom, he lets out a slow, deep breath. Eventually, his eyes slip shut as the ache in his chest grows by the second. He takes one more audible breath, and the next exhale is interrupted by a cry of pain. There aren’t any tears to follow. The one time that he wants to cry, it doesn’t happen. He can only screw his eyes shut as the pressure steadily builds in both his heart and behind his eyes without any release for it.

He thought he would have been comforted by the fact that someone felt the same way that he did about his father. He thought he would be relieved. But it’s causing him more pain, and he selfishly wishes that she would have kept this to herself and continued to suffer in silence like he had been.

It isn’t okay. Demyx could  _ never _ be okay with this.

His hand twitches with the intent to reach for his phone and dial Axel’s number, but what right would he have to push this burden onto him? There were things that he had to experience by himself and this was one of them. Right? Or would it be better to call him because this is the most alone he’s ever felt in his life? He wants someone to be here with him even if it’s only over the phone, but he also doesn’t want to tell Axel something that will make him angry and not be able to do anything about it.

For a moment, he places his hands over his face and throws himself back onto his mattress. A beat or so passes before he drags his hands away and stares helplessly at the ceiling. It’s within those beats that he realizes he isn’t God. He hurts like a human, loves like a human, sins like a human, and lives this human life. Why should he be expected to live up to these supernatural expectations when he isn’t supernatural? Why should he have to forgive anyone...for anything? Especially when they aren’t willing to do anything to earn it.  _ Especially  _ when they’ve done something unforgivable.

Demyx is not God. Never has been, never will be, will never claim to be. He’s done being controlled by everyone else’s expectations and beliefs. He’s done letting everyone else tell him who God is and what His words mean. And today is the last day that he will ever refer to himself as a Christian.


End file.
